The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

“We need to think it through,” said Pompeo.

  Pence asked, “Would you meet with Ghani first?”

  “Only if Ghani knows I’m also going to sit down with the Taliban later,” said Trump.

  Trump’s next thought was to start reducing troop levels immediately. No one supported the idea, although only Khalilzad spoke against it. Trump said, “Our attitude is, I’m not looking to get out. I will meet with Ghani first. This could be a home run. The Taliban would like to talk to Donald Trump to talk peace. We should say to the press that the President has agreed to a meeting, and he’s looking forward to the meeting.” I could sense even through my remote connection (and Kupperman agreed later) that Pompeo and others in the Sit Room were close to meltdown. Pence added, “To meet with Ghani and others in the Afghan government,” and Trump agreed, “Yes, and before the meeting with the Taliban.”

  With that, Trump got up and started to leave. I all but yelled from Warsaw, “What about Ukraine?” and the meeting moved to that subject, which I will describe at length in the next chapter.

  I concluded after the call that Trump had suggested meeting the Taliban because he was looking for alternatives to signing the Pompeo-Khalilzad deal. Obviously, he didn’t fully agree with me that he shouldn’t sign it, but he saw the clear political risks, if nothing else, if he did sign it. Faced with that unhappy choice, he reached for something to avoid the dilemma and to find an option to put him in the starring role. What could go wrong? The battle roared on.

  Back in Washington, Kupperman heard from Dan Walsh, a Mulvaney deputy, on the Wednesday after Labor Day, that Trump wanted the Taliban and Ghani meetings at Camp David. I had mistakenly put the arrangements for this meeting out of mind, assuming the logistics would be so complicated that delay was inevitable, not to mention the chance Taliban leaders would smell a trap and reject the invitation entirely. So, the idea things had progressed to the point where Camp David was Trump’s preference was truly disheartening. I didn’t want the meetings, and I didn’t want the deal, and now it seemed we might get both. The next day, September 5, Mulvaney came to my office just before eight a.m. to tell me personally this was where things were headed. He planned to go up to Camp David with Trump on Saturday and suggested I come up on Sunday with the rest of the gang (Pompeo, Esper, Dunford, and Khalilzad). Pompeo was handling travel arrangements for the Taliban, and the Qataris were flying in the Taliban thugs. Also interesting was that Pompeo seemed to be backing away from the deal, perhaps finally realizing there was political danger for him in continuing to be the deal’s strongest supporter.8

  Walsh was apoplectic about the physical dangers of this exercise and the lack of time to plan adequately, but Trump was determined to proceed. He worried that too-intrusive security measures would offend the Taliban’s dignity. This precipitated chaotic early-morning meetings among the rest of us to discuss how to protect Trump from his “dignified” guests. One thing Mulvaney, Kupperman, Walsh, and I all agreed on was that Pence was not going to Camp David, no matter what. There is much I cannot describe here, but suffice it to say that, with one exception, no one in the West Wing was enthusiastic about this frolic.

  Amid these conversations, we heard reports from Afghanistan about a suicide bombing in Kabul, with ten killed, including one American and one Romanian service member, and several wounded.9 It was almost certainly a Taliban attack, although given Iran’s recent activity in Afghanistan, it could have been a joint effort. Mulvaney came into my office a little before nine a.m. to say, “If my Trump-o-meter reading is accurate, I think there’s at least a twenty percent chance he will cancel [the Sunday meeting]. He [Trump] said immediately, ‘We can’t do the meeting,’ ” which sounded like more than 20 percent to me. I pointed out—not that it probably wasn’t too late—that once Trump met with Ghani and the Taliban, he would own this deal beyond any chance of separating himself from it when things went wrong. In fact, commentary was already growing about how bad the underlying deal was, even though no one outside the Administration knew anything about a Taliban meeting, let alone one at Camp David. Thus, there was at least a chance to postpone things further, with the rising attendant possibility of killing the agreement entirely. Moreover, if the meeting proceeded, it would be on September 8, three days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda, to which the Taliban had given aid and comfort. How could anyone have missed that?

  Mulvaney and I agreed to see Trump as early as possible, which turned out to be eleven forty-five, with Pompeo and others, including, for some unknown reason, Mnuchin. Almost before we sat down in the Oval, Trump said, “Don’t take the meeting. Put out a statement that says, ‘We had a meeting scheduled, but they killed one of our soldiers and nine others, so we canceled it.’ There should be a cease-fire, or I don’t want to negotiate. We should drop a bomb, hit ’em hard. If they can’t do a cease-fire, I don’t want an agreement.” That pretty well settled that. Pompeo and I spoke after he was back at the State Department to see if his understanding was the same as mine, that not only the Taliban but also the Ghani meeting was canceled, and he agreed that’s what he’d heard Trump say. We also concluded, as Mulvaney and I had, that we should make no statement about not meeting the Taliban. Much better to say nothing and hope the possibility never became public. There were media reports in Afghanistan already about Ghani’s coming to Washington, but US press stories hadn’t picked up the real reason; maybe it would stay that way.10

  Of course not. On Saturday evening, September 7, with no warning, Trump tweeted:

  Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to…

  …an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they…

  …only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?

  He couldn’t restrain himself. The Sunday media were flooded with accounts of the near-disaster of Camp David. The Taliban brashly claimed the US would “be harmed more than anyone” by canceling the meeting, which was totally false, but it also meant Afghanistan’s September 28 presidential election would now go forward, which it did. Neither the incumbent, President Ghani, nor Afghanistan’s Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah, received an absolute majority, necessitating a runoff, likely to be scheduled in 2020. Thus, unfortunately, rather than strengthening the government’s hand, the runoff requirement introduced new political uncertainty. Nonetheless, the determination of Afghans who wanted an elected government rather than theocratic rule remained strong, which added at least some muscle to those determined to avoid a sellout to the Taliban.

  * * *

  This was effectively the last of my involvement in Afghanistan. Since I resigned, Trump resumed talks with the Taliban, which were just as detrimental to the United States as before. Combined, however, with the October withdrawal debacle in Syria, a clear unforced error by Trump personally, political opposition to surrendering in Afghanistan grew stronger. Nonetheless, on Saturday, February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement that, in my view, looked very much like the agreement that had come unstuck in September. This still being the Twitter presidency, I tweeted my opposition that morning: “Signing this agreement with Taliban is an unacceptable risk to America’s civilian population. This is an Obama-style deal. Legitimizing the Taliban sends the wrong signal to ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists, and to America’s enemies generally.” Trump responded in typical fashion at a press conference a few hours lat
er, saying of me, “He had his chance; he didn’t do it.”11 The preceding chapter demonstrates, to the contrary, that this Afghanistan deal is entirely Trump’s. Time will prove who is right, and the full effects of the deal may not become apparent until after Trump leaves office. But there should be no mistaking this reality: Trump will be responsible for the consequences, politically and militarily.

  CHAPTER 14 THE END OF THE IDYLL

  Ukraine seems an unlikely place as a battleground to imperil an American presidency, but that is exactly what happened in 2019, exploding literally just days after I resigned. My timing couldn’t have been better. Not only was I a participant in and witness to much of the debacle as it unfolded, but I also seemed poised, for good or ill, to figure in only the fourth serious effort in American history to impeach a President. Throughout my West Wing tenure, Trump wanted to do what he wanted to do, based on what he knew and what he saw as his own best personal interests. And in Ukraine, he seemed finally able to have it all.

  Ukraine is under intense Russian political and economic pressure. In 2014, Moscow orchestrated the illegitimate annexation of Crimea after intervening militarily, the first change in European borders due to military force since 1945. Russian troops remained deployed across the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, supporting and in fact directing separatist forces there. This major Russian-American dispute proves that failing to act earlier to bring Ukraine into NATO left this large, critically important country vulnerable to Putin’s effort to reestablish Russian hegemony within the space of the former Soviet Union. At NATO’s April 2008 Bucharest Summit, the Bush 43 Administration tried to put Georgia and Ukraine on a path to NATO membership, which the Europeans, especially Germany and France, opposed. The tragic consequences were made plain that August, when Russian troops invaded Georgia, effectively placing two provinces under Moscow’s control, which remain so to this day. Ukraine’s suffering began later, but the pattern was the same. Western sanctions followed, but Russia neither withdrew nor modified its belligerent behavior in any substantial way during the Obama Administration, sensing the palpable weakness Obama projected globally.

  Trump inherited this debacle, but he paid very little attention to it in his first two years in office, at least officially. In 2017, Tillerson appointed Kurt Volker, a former Foreign Service officer I knew, as Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. My first meeting with Volker in this capacity came on May 10, 2018, when he described his role and priorities. He was then advocating a “nonrecognition policy” on Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military presence in the Donbas, along their border. Throughout the remainder of my White House tenure, Volker was a regular visitor, keeping me posted on his efforts. I found him professional and helpful as I engaged with my European counterparts on Ukraine and related issues.

  My first major encounter with Ukraine itself in the Trump Administration came in 2018 when I flew to Kiev to celebrate the August 24 anniversary of Ukraine’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. Jim Mattis had attended this ceremony in 2017, feeling as I did the importance of demonstrating US resolve in support of Ukraine’s continued independence and viability. Given Russia’s unilateral annexation of Crimea, plus the obvious Russian assistance to and control over “opposition” forces in eastern Ukraine, this concern was far from hypothetical.

  I came from Geneva the night before, after meetings on US-Russian issues with Nikolai Patrushev, my Russian counterpart, where I happily told them I was flying from Switzerland to Ukraine for the celebrations. Smiles all around. Whether by Russian intention or not, Ukraine was one of the last issues on the agenda with Patrushev, and we barely had time for it before we both left the US mission for the Geneva airport. In lieu of a real discussion, but to underscore nonetheless how strongly we felt about Ukraine, I said, “I incorporate herewith everything we have said before, and we still mean it!” Patrushev didn’t say much of anything.

  On August 24, I had a working breakfast with Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman on Ukraine’s economy and Russia’s increasing efforts to interfere in the upcoming 2019 elections. Groysman argued that Ukraine was a line for Putin, and if he could cross it successfully, he would establish impunity for his actions throughout Europe and globally, which posed entirely legitimate concerns for the United States.1 Marie Yovanovitch, our Ambassador to Ukraine, and several embassy staffers also attended the breakfast and were with me pretty much throughout the entire day. After breakfast, we went to the reviewing stand for the parade on Khreshchatyk Boulevard where the 2013–14 Euromaidan demonstrations had taken place, forcing out the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime. I stood on the platform with President Petro Poroshenko and eight or ten members of his government, next to Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, ironical in light of future developments. Though reminiscent of May Day pageantry in Moscow’s Red Square during the Cold War, the parade was politically the opposite. Poroshenko’s speech was viscerally anti-Russian, and his loudest applause line came when he vowed to establish an autocephalous (independent from Moscow) Ukrainian Orthodox church patriarchate.

  During the parade, Poroshenko thanked me several times for US-supplied weapons systems and equipment as they passed by, and for the Tennessee National Guard unit that marched with other NATO troops deployed to Ukraine to train its military. Afterward, we rode to the Mariinsky Palace, originally built for Catherine the Great and recently restored by Poroshenko’s wife, shortly to be the venue for a large reception Poroshenko was hosting. There, at noon, I met with Poroshenko, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, National Security Advisor Kostya Yeliseyev, and others. We discussed Ukraine’s security posture, particularly vis-à-vis Russia and the various threats it posed, not just militarily, but also Moscow’s efforts to subvert Ukraine’s 2019 elections. Poroshenko wanted to buy more US weapons, and we elaborated our worries about Ukrainian companies’ selling advanced airplane engine designs to China, concerns that only grew more acute over the year before my next visit to Kiev.

  After the meeting, Poroshenko took me to another room for a one-on-one, where he asked the US to endorse his reelection campaign. He also asked for a number of things that I addressed, allowing me to slide past the endorsement request without being too rude when I said no. What Poroshenko really wanted was for America to sanction Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch backing Yulia Tymoshenko, who was, at least at this point, Poroshenko’s main competition in the 2019 elections. Although it didn’t come up in this conversation, Kolomoisky was also backing Volodymyr Zelensky, then leading the polls but not regarded as serious, because, after all, he was just an actor… (For liberal readers, that’s a joke. Ronald Reagan, one of America’s greatest Presidents, was also an actor.) I told Poroshenko if he had evidence on Kolomoisky, he should send it to the Justice Department. I filled Yovanovitch in on this conversation as we rode to the next event, a press conference with Ukrainian media.

  The last meeting was a two forty-five p.m. coffee at Yovanovitch’s official residence with various leaders in Parliament, including Tymoshenko, whom I had met in the Bush 43 Administration and later. The State Department didn’t want me to meet with Tymoshenko separately because they thought she was too close to Russia, although typical of the department’s methods, that’s not how they put it. This joint meeting was the closest I could get to a separate meeting, not that it mattered, because Tymoshenko, as the only presidential candidate among the parliamentary leaders, dominated the conversation, not unexpectedly. She reminded me she had read my book Surrender Is Not an Option, always a good way to get an author’s attention, and mentioned Senator Kyl’s advice to keep moving and keep firing, like a big gray battleship. Well prepared. At this point, only Zelensky was doing well in the polls, with all the other candidates aiming to finish among the top two in the first round, thus getting into the expected runoff. After this meeting, we headed for the airport and then back to Andrews.

  Not for nearly three months did I again have much involvement in matters Ukrainian, until the
early afternoon of Sunday, November 25, when I received word of an incident at sea between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian warships and an accompanying tugboat had tried to enter the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait, the narrow body of water separating the Crimean Peninsula from Russia proper, and over which Russia had recently built a bridge. Our initial information was that a Russian naval vessel had rammed a Ukrainian ship, but later information indicated that Russians had fired what were perhaps intended as warning shots, one or more of which hit the Ukrainian ships. None of this could be accidental. The Russians seized all three Ukrainian ships and their crews (with some of them reportedly injured), although it was not clear in whose waters the ships were when they were taken. Most of this information came through our Kiev embassy, so we were hearing Ukraine’s side of the story, at least initially.

  Because escalation was possible, I decided to call Trump. I wanted to be sure he knew that we were monitoring the situation, in case journalists started asking questions. His first response was “What are the Europeans doing about this?” the answer to which, of course, was “Nothing,” the same as we were doing. (The European Union did later put out a statement, but it was the usual mush.) Trump’s first thought was that Ukraine had been provocative, which was at least possible, given the impending presidential elections. But it was also possible the Russians were looking for a confrontation, perhaps trying in some way to legitimize their “annexation” of Crimea, which very few other countries recognized. Trump wasn’t interested in doing anything quickly, even if Russia was entirely in the wrong. By the evening, Poroshenko appeared ready to declare martial law, which seemed a surprising reaction to an incident at sea. The State Department wanted to issue a strong anti-Russia statement, which I blocked because of what Trump had said a few hours earlier. Moreover, there was every prospect of a UN Security Council meeting Monday, ironically called by Russia, during which there would obviously be a US statement, giving us more time to obtain the facts.